Page 2 - Abortion

Trump wouldn't say whether he'd veto national ban as abortion is top issue

Former President Donald Trump repeatedly declined to say during this week's debate if he would veto a national abortion ban if he were elected again a question that has lingered as the Republican nominee has shifted his stances on the crucial election issue. In Tuesday's debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump said he would not sign a federal abortion ban, insisting that a ban would not pass Congress anyway. But he refused twice to say if he would veto such legislation if it landed on his desk. Trump's running mate, Sen. JD Vance, a Republican from Ohio, said in an interview with NBC News last month that the former president would veto a ban. In response to moderators prompting him about Vance's statement, Trump said: I didn't discuss it with JD, in all fairness. And I don't mind if he has a certain view, but I don't think he was speaking for me. The exchange comes as voters and advocates across the spectrum wait for Trump to clarify his fluctuating stances on abortion, and

Abortion rights measure will be on Missouri's November ballot, court rules

An amendment to restore abortion rights in Missouri will be on the ballot, the state's Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday. The proposal to enshrine abortion rights in the constitution is expected to widely undo the state's 2022 near-total abortion ban if passed. Judges ruled hours before the Tuesday deadline for changes to be made to the November ballot. Mary Catherine Martin, a lawyer for a group of GOP lawmakers and abortion opponents suing to remove the amendment, during Tuesday arguments told Supreme Court judges that the initiative petition misled voters by not listing all the laws restricting abortion that it would effectively repeal. Abortion-rights campaign lawyer Chuck Hatfield described the lawsuit as an attempt to derail democracy. Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, who opposes abortion, decertified the measure Monday, removing it from the ballot himself following a county circuit judge's ruling Friday. The amendment is part of a national push to have voters weigh

Trump endorses free IVF; campaign stumbles over Florida abortion measure

IVF treatments became an additional flashpoint after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled in February that frozen embryos could be considered children under state law

Doesn't have vote to liberalise Poland's abortion law, says Donald Tusk

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has acknowledged that he does not have the backing in parliament to change the country's abortion law, which is among the most restrictive in all of Europe. Tusk, a centrist, took power in December at the head of a coalition that spans a broad ideological divide, with lawmakers on the left who want to legalise abortion and conservatives strongly opposed. Changing the law to allow abortion up to the 12th week of pregnancy was one of his campaign promises. There will be no majority in this parliament for legal abortion, in the full sense of the word, until the next elections. Let's not kid ourselves," Tusk said during an event on Friday where he was asked about the matter. Lawmakers to the parliament were elected last October for a term of four years. Tusk said his government is instead working on establishing new procedures in the prosecutor's office and in Polish hospitals in order to ease some of the de facto restrictions. This is already underwa

Arizona Supreme Court clears way for voters to decide on right to abortion

The Arizona Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a 200-word summary that abortion advocates used to collect signatures for a ballot measure is valid, clearing the way for voters to decide on the constitutional right to an abortion. Under the measure, abortions would be allowed until an embryo or foetus could survive outside the womb, typically around 24 weeks. There are some exceptions for later-term abortions to save the mother's life or to protect her physical or mental health. The decision comes on the heels of a Thursday ballot printing deadline in Arizona. The Arizona Right to Life, the organisation that sued the ballot measure campaign, argued that the petition summary was misleading. The high court justices rejected that argument, as well as the claim that the summary for the proposed amendment failed to mention it would overturn existing abortion laws if approved by voters. We have noted that (r)easonable people can differ about the best way to describe a principal provision,

DIY abortions surge post-Roe: Women turn to herbs, alcohol, and more

The study suggested that women's methods ranged from unprescribed medication use to dangerous practices like alcohol, drugs, and self-harm

TikTok collected data on issues like abortion, gun control: US Justice Dept

In a fresh broadside against one of the world's most popular technology companies, the Justice Department late Friday accused TikTok of harnessing the capability to gather bulk information on users based on views on divisive social issues like gun control, abortion and religion. Government lawyers wrote in a brief filed to the federal appeals court in Washington that TikTok and its Beijing-based parent company ByteDance used an internal web-suite system called Lark to enable TikTok employees to speak directly with ByteDance engineers in China. TikTok employees used Lark to send sensitive data about US users, information that has wound up being stored on Chinese servers and accessible to ByteDance employees in China, federal officials said. One of Lark's internal search tools, the filing states, permits ByteDance and TikTok employees in the US and China to gather information on users' content or expressions, including views on sensitive topics, such as abortion or religion. Last year

US election: Trump attacks Harris on abortion, an issue he rarely discusses

The former president focused on abortion in a winding speech in which he spent much of his energy attacking Harris and seeking to neutralise her strengths as a candidate

Democrats hope Harris' bluntness on abortion will translate to 2024 wins

President Joe Biden might not often use the word abortion when he talks about the overturning of Roe v. Wade, but Vice President Kamala Harris sure does. She's also toured a Planned Parenthood clinic where the procedure is performed, and routinely links the fall of Roe to the larger issue of rising maternal mortality nationwide. Now that Harris is running for president in place of Biden, Democrats and advocates for reproductive rights are hoping that her bluntness on abortion coupled with the administration's policies will help sway voters to deliver them not just the White House but key congressional seats as well. The president on the record was fabulous and the campaign was turning out multiple repro-focused ads a week, and had an army of surrogates, said Mini Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All. But, you know, nothing is more compelling than the top of the ticket being the most compelling on the issue, and that's what we have now. In her first official rally a

Kamala Harris condemns Trump's new VP, J D Vance over abortion stance

This criticism comes in the wake of Vance's recent statements where he has publicly aligned himself with Trump's viewpoint that abortion should be governed by state laws rather than federal mandates.

VP Kamala Harris, democrats target Trump on abortion ruling anniversary

Kamala Harris called the plan to overturn Roe v Wade 'premeditated'

US Supreme Court rejects bid to restrict access to abortion pills

In 2016 and 2021, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made efforts to make it easier to prescribe and distribute the medication

Why abortions are rising in US despite restrictions, bans in many states

A new study by #WeCount reveals a dramatic rise in telehealth medication abortions, surpassing traditional methods, amidst legal battles over abortion access in US

Democratic Arizona guv signs bill repealing 1864 ban on most abortions

Democratic Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs has relegated a Civil War-era ban on most abortions to the past by signing a repeal bill Thursday. Hobbs says the repeal, signed Thursday, is just the beginning of a fight to protect reproductive health care in Arizona. But the repeal may not take effect until 90 days after the end of the legislative session, in June or July. Abortion rights advocates hope a court will step in to prevent that outcome. The effort to repeal the long-dormant law, which bans all abortions except those done to save a patient's life, won final legislative approval Wednesday in a 16-14 vote of the Senate, as two GOP lawmakers joined with Democrats. The vote extended for hours as senators described their motivations in personal, emotional and even biblical terms including graphic descriptions of abortion procedures and amplified audio recordings of a fetal heartbeat, along with warnings against the dangers of legislating religious beliefs. At the same time Wednesday, ..

Abortion still consuming US politics, courts 2 years after SC draft leaked

Two years after a leaked draft of a US Supreme Court opinion signalled that the nation's abortion landscape was about to shift dramatically, the issue is still consuming the nation's courts, legislatures and political campaigns and changing the course of lives. On Wednesday, a ban on abortion after the first six weeks of pregnancy, often before women realise they're pregnant, took effect in Florida, echoing laws in two other states. In Arizona, meanwhile, lawmakers voted to repeal a total ban on abortion dating back to 1864, decades before Arizona became a state. Also this week, the Kansas Legislature increased funding for anti-abortion centres, while advocates in South Dakota submitted the required number of signatures for a ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. The status of abortion in states across the country has changed constantly, with lawmakers passing measures and courts ruling on challenges to them. Currently, 14 states are enforcing bans o

Arizona's Democrats get enough votes to repeal 19th century abortion ban

Democrats in the Arizona Legislature made a final push Wednesday to repeal the state's long-dormant ban on nearly all abortions, which a court said can be enforced. Voting wasn't complete but the Senate had the 16 votes it needed to advance the bill. Fourteen Democrats in the Senate were joined by two Republican votes in favour of repealing the bill, which narrowly cleared the Arizona House last week and is expected to be signed by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs. The near-total ban, which predates Arizona's statehood, permits abortions only to save the patient's life and provides no exceptions for survivors of rape or incest. In a ruling last month, the Arizona Supreme Court suggested doctors could be prosecuted under the 1864 law, which says that anyone who assists in an abortion can be sentenced to two to five years in prison. If the repeal bill is signed, a 2022 statute banning the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy would become Arizona's prevailing abortion law. Still, there

Florida's 6-week abortion ban takes effect, draws doctors' criticism

Florida's ban on most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, before many women even know they are pregnant, went into effect on Wednesday, and some doctors are concerned that women in the state will no longer have access to needed health care. Dr. Leah Roberts, a reproductive endocrinologist and fertility specialist with Boca Fertility in Boca Raton, said the anti-abortion laws being enacted by Florida and other red states are being vaguely written by people who don't understand medical science. The rules are affecting not just women who want therapeutic abortions, meaning procedures to terminate viable pregnancies because of personal choice, but also nonviable pregnancies for women who want to have babies. We're coming in between them and their doctors and preventing them from getting care until it's literally saving their lives, sometimes at the expense of their fertility, Roberts said. The new ban has an exception for saving a woman's life, as well as in cases involving rape an

Biden to assail Florida's 6-week abortion ban as he aims another term

President Joe Biden is wading deeper into the fight over abortion rights that has energised Democrats since the fall of Roe v. Wade, travelling to Florida to assail the state's upcoming ban and similar restrictions that have imperiled access to care for pregnant women nationwide. Tuesday's campaign visit to Tampa puts Biden in the epicentre of the latest battle over abortion restrictions. The state's six-week abortion ban is poised to go into effect May 1 at the same time that Florida voters are gearing up for a ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights in the state's constitution. Biden is seeking to capitalise on the unceasing momentum against abortion restrictions nationwide to not only buoy his reelection bid in battleground states he won in 2020, but also to go on the offensive against Donald Trump in states that the presumptive Republican nominee won four years ago. One of those states is Florida, where Biden lost by 3.3 percentage points to Trump. At the same time, .

SC permits minor rape survivor for medical termination of 30-week pregnancy

The Supreme Court on Monday permitted a 14-year-old alleged rape survivor to undergo medical termination of her almost 30-week pregnancy. Exercising its powers under Article 142 of the Constitution which empowers it to pass any order necessary for doing complete justice in any case, a bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud directed the dean of the Lokmanya Tilak Municipal Medical College and General Hospital (LTMGH) at Sion in Mumbai to set up a team of doctors immediately for terminating the pregnancy. It also set aside the Bombay High Court order declining the plea, filed by the father of the minor, seeking medical termination of her pregnancy. The top court had on April 19 ordered medical examination of the minor. It had sought a report from Mumbai's Sion hospital about the girl's possible physical and psychological condition if she undergoes medical termination of pregnancy or if she is advised against it. Under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act, the upper

Arizona's Democrats to bring proposed repeal of abortion ban to a vote

Democrats in the Arizona Senate cleared a path to bring a proposed repeal of the state's near-total ban on abortions to a vote after the state's highest court concluded the law can be enforced and the state House blocked efforts to undo the long-dormant statute. Although no vote was taken on the repeal itself, Republican Sens. T.J. Shope and Shawnna Bolick sided with 14 Democrats in the Senate on Wednesday in changing rules to let a repeal proposal advance after the deadline for hearing bills had passed. Proponents say the Senate could vote on the repeal as early as May 1. If the proposed repeal wins final approval from the Republican-controlled Legislature and is signed into law by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, the 2022 statute banning the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy would become the prevailing abortion law. The move by the Senate came after Republicans in the Arizona House, for the second time in a week, blocked attempts on Wednesday to bring a repeal bill to a vote. One